Nextbit Joins Razer, Will Act as Independent Mobile Division

Nextbit, the company behind the cloud-centric Robin smartphone, has officially joined Razer. To say this is a surprise would be an understatement, but not necessarily regarding the idea of Nextbit being acquired.

While financial details have not been made public, Nextbit’s CEO Tom Moss wrote a brief post to Nextbit’s forum stating, “Nextbit will operate as an independent division inside Razer, focused on unique mobile design and experiences.” Essentially, Nextbit will remain the same, but will be, “bigger and better.”

With this move, the sale of Robin has officially ceased, but Nextbit stresses that this does not mean the end of support to current owners. Stated in another post by Nextbit’s community manager, the company will be, “continuing the support we promised everyone since the beginning of our Kickstarter campaign.” Specifically, “We will continue to fulfill warranties for 6 more months. And as promised, we will continue to provide software updates and security patches through February 2018.

Now, in the beginning of this post, I hinted that the idea of Nextbit getting acquired probably shouldn’t surprise anyone, but Razer being the buyer is quite a shock. While we don’t have sales figures to go off of, we do have a specific number of backers from the original Kickstarter campaign. That number is 3,611. In terms of the Android market, that number is insanely low, potentially low enough to keep potential investors away from a Robin 2. However, the Robin does have something very promising onboard (and most importantly, off-board), that being its cloud storage software. Thanks to this unique concept, Nextbit does have something worth value, not just a well-designed shell with mid-range specs inside. If Razer, a company pretty focused on gaming, sees value in a feature such as this, more power to them.

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javaper

Can’t wait to see what they do next!

Jason Berek-Lewis

Robin was NOT a great little phone – I had so many problems with mine! After owning the phone for less than 3 months, the body was bent and warped (despite always being in a Nextbit case). The phone would not work with Google Play Music (the equaliser never worked), battery life was woeful, bluetooth was a disaster and the phone would not connect with my Android Wear watch… It was gorgeous looking though…

Armaan Modi

Will we see a Razer branded smartphone some day? It will be awesome to see a Razer smartphone that is geared towards gaming.

Eric

Great to see Scott Croyle is still sticking around. That man pushes out some fresh designs.

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Kevin Brosseau

Hmm, so Razer’s going to finish killing another dying company like they did with Ouya?

El_Big_CHRIS

To be fair, the Ouya was garbage, while the Robin wasn’t. Not exaclty worth $400 but at <$200 it definitely was a great little phone.

Michael Graef

While the first-gen Robin was certainly no iPhone (or Galaxy) killer, it showed a lot of potential. I’d love to still see a second gen device from them.